[Coco] CoCo TALK #18 an introduction to OS9

[Steve Strowbridge]

I would love to see and hear more about NitrOS9 projects, it's only been on
my radar for literally like a week and a half, but, just coming from
memory, I don't recall hearing or reading about too many OS-9 specific
projects, and more importantly, I'd like to see more people give it a try,
we have the means to run virtual hard drives on the CoCoSDC, in emulators
and on DriveWire, so the ability exists, but I think there's a lot of
reluctance, hesitation, and misconceptions about it, and from my brief
exposure, there's certainly a degree of difficulty getting off the ground
and wrapping your brain around everything from ground zero.

I'm certainly going to do what I can to start compiling information,
resources, stock images, etc., and try and make it easier for myself and
hopefully other previous novices to this system.

While I don't think this is for everyone, and even myself, I don't think
I'd use it daily, I'd like to have a better understanding of it, a lack of
fear, a level of comfort and competence, and then, see what creative sparks
ignite from being able to "just do it" with the OS.

Hopefully more people will take interest and good things will come.  We've
got like almost 150 views on that video already, so it's seemingly a topic
of interest.



Steve Strowbridge, aka
The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
Website/Merchandise/CoCo links page:
http://ogsteviestrow.com
Email:  ogsteviestrow at gmail.com
Get your "Game Play Goodnes" fix of CoCo and retro videos at:
http://youtube.com/ogsteviestrow


On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 10:10 PM, James Jones <jejones3141 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hmmm. I would have to say I can't recall any OS-9 user who wasn't/isn't
> willing to share information and help someone get started or get ahead with
> OS-9. The things that Kip, Curtis, and more other people than I can name
> offhand are doing and have done are evidence thereof, and they have my
> thanks and respect.
>
> Acting so as to keep the community small and exclusive would be and is
> counterproductive, and would've been especially so back in the day--all the
> software intimately tied to every wart of the CoCo hardware is a large part
> of what precluded improvements to the CoCo, so you want as many people
> comfortable with OS-9 and writing software for OS-9 as possible.
>
> Remember back when Microsoft Windows started coming with Internet Explorer,
> making it far easier, especially in the days of modems when we were all
> amazed when it only took *four minutes* to download a whole megabyte of
> data, to just go along with IE and not bother to install those other
> browsers, so that Joe Average thought IE *was* the Internet? And how it was
> close to impossible to buy a prebuilt computer that didn't just come with
> Windows, so that Joe Average didn't have to do anything to run Windows, and
> thought Windows was free? In the same way, the CoCo just came with whatever
> flavor of Color BASIC. If Tandy had really been interested in promoting
> OS-9, the CoCo 3 would by default have come with OS-9 on ROM--to make it
> sort of a better equivalent of what people were used to, it could boot up
> in BASIC09, and have some option so that later on as a user gained
> experience and wanted to customize, one could boot from a floppy. (Still
> want to use Color BASIC? Pay extra to get the ROMs with it and get them
> swapped in.)
>
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